By Abbey Makoe
Africa’s role – or lack thereof, came into sharp focus when the UN General Assembly debated the under-representation of the continent in the global governance system, particularly at the UN Security Council.
The debate, which took place at the beginning of the week, was called by Sierra Leone, whose leader, President Julius Maada Bio made a compelling case on behalf of the more than 1 billion people of Africa.
“The time for half-measures and incremental progress is over,” Bio charged. “Africa must be heard, and its demands for justice and equity must be met,” he added emphatically, as is to set off the “winds of change”, some ferocious fires.
There has been constant continental activism to turn around the abominable status quo of the UN system, with a particular focus on the powerful UN Security Council (UNSC).
The body was set up at the end of WW II in 1945. It was established in the aftermath of Nazi Germany’s bloodthirsty dominance that resulted in the gruesome genocide that left at least 6 million Jews killed. The UN, and its Security Council, had since existed ostensibly to thwart any potential man-made conflict with a causal capacity for another world war.
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The majority of Africa was under the yoke of the colonial regimes of the West, particularly Great Britain, France and Portugal, among others. Other European nations that prospered from stealing, plundering and ravaging Africa’s natural wealth include The Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Belgium and Italy.
In fact, there was a time in history that is described as the “Scramble for Africa” by Western imperial war-mongers. Their dastardly legacy can still be felt to this day. Their systematic subjugation of Africa manifests itself in the continent’s deliberate side-lining at international forums such as the UNSC, where pertinent resolutions with binding authority are debated and adopted.
Examples could be the decision to send a military force to a conflict zone for peace-keeping undertakings, or resolutions ordering warring parties to behave in a particular manner.
As the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres put it so well: “Africa has often been at the centre of conflicts fuelled by greed for the continent’s resources, necessary to the global economy,” he said.
I quite like the last part of his quote. It clearly makes a pertinent point that detractors of Africa are oftentimes pleased to underplay, or totally ignore. This is a strategy that unifies the West against the continent. As a collective, they are glad to restrict Africa’s progress through their unfettered dominance of the international institutions.
Africa continues to be under-represented at the UNSC and domineering international financial institutions, Guterres points out, yet “Africa is over-represented in the very challenges these structures are designed to address”.
In short, when it comes to Africa, the former colonial masters continue to speak with forked tongues. Like chameleons, they are sly and cunning in the full knowledge that their mission is to keep Africa as a modern-day slave.
They are happy to extend grants and loans laced with harmful trappings to Mother Africa. They swamped Africa’s institutions to conduct research and fund significant numbers of Africans to study abroad so they could return to spread the ethos of Western civilization.
In quite devious ways, the West continues to pin Africa’s development against the robes, and too often fund the continent’s political systems so that their stooges perform their dirty work.
This gross injustice, and momentous anomaly, is what Sierra Leone brought to the attention of its perpetrators, and victims alike in New York this week.
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At this present juncture, almost nearly half of the UN’s peacekeeping operations are located in Africa. Additionally, 40% of the UN peacekeepers are Africans.
Empirical evidence abounds, and scholars are aware, as well as politicians: That the world can simply not do without Africa. Therefore, injustice must end forthwith.
Guterres elaborated: “The world has changed since 1945. But the composition of the (UN Security) Council, despite a few changes, has not kept pace.”
For the longest time, the African Union has been campaigning to have at least two permanent seats at the UNSC, plus an additional two non-permanent seats. This is a perfectly reasonable request, or case to make.
The UNSC is comprised of 15 member-states. The first five are permanent members of the Council, and the remaining 10 are rotational and are allocated by region on a periodic basis.
The five permanent members – the UK, the US, France, China and Russia, have veto power. The rest don’t. In fact, this fact alone is a good example of why the Israeli genocide has continued unabated. It is because every time the UNSC adopted a resolution calling for Israel to respect international law and the Genocide Convention, the US used its veto power to thwart the adoption of any such resolution.
In the same vein, the US has become more powerful than the entire UN put together in the settlement, or not, of conflict in Gaza and anywhere in the world where Washington has foreign policy objectives.
To quote Guterres’ erudite words again: “We cannot accept the world’s preeminent peace and security body lacks a permanent voice for a continent of well over a billion people – a young and rapidly growing population – making up 28% of the membership of the United Nations,” said the UN Chief.
One of the starkest failures of the UN, he added, was to adequately align African representation with the continent’s efforts and contributions.
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Such inherent failures the continent has repeatedly brought to the deaf ears of the powerful and over-represented Western nations at the UNSC.
Examples of unjustifiable Western domination over the developing world are simply too many to mention. However, this must end, and end now, as Sierra Leone argued.
The reconfiguration of the international world order is an inevitable consequence of the inherent dispensation of unjust practices. Domination of some, by others – to paraphrase Mandela, is as undesirable today as it was from time immemorial.
The UN’s Guterres is serving his second and last term. To his credit, imperfect as his reign has been, no one should fault him for failure to step on the toes of the most powerful at the UN, including his host country.
Africa can no longer be the doormat of treacherous foreign powers whose primary purpose is to plunder our resources, install puppet regimes of their choice, and turn brothers and sisters against each other in civil wars while they whisk away the wealth of the continent to Western capitals for the development of their people.
Blood diamonds, and blood money, are evil foundations of many ill-gotten fortunes that have left Africa impoverished, and the former colonial powers enriched. Demand for reparations must be Africa’s next demand at the UN.
*Abbey Makoe is Founder and Editor-in-Chief: Global South Media Network.
